Follow by Email

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

1 Peter 1:20-21,
“He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was
manifest in these last times for you who through Him believe in God who raised
Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.”

For
all of this century and the better part of last century there has been an
unabashed, enthusiastic, and merciless assault on the Christ, the singularity
of Him, the nature of Him, the uniqueness of Him, and the divinity of Him.

From
without and from within the church, wherever you turn nowadays there is someone
somewhere eager to besmirch the name Jesus, to minimize His importance in our
redemption, to lower Him to nothing more than a nice guy who said quaint things
that made a lot of sense, but nowhere near the only begotten Son of God through
whom we come to believe and have life everlasting.

Men
today are no longer servants of Christ, they are spiritual people, with spiritual
awareness, and spiritual sensitivity,
who are open to the possibility of there being many paths to God, and even to
their being many gods in what we, as open minded global citizens, have come to
term Zion, paradise, heaven, Valhalla, Nirvana, Arcadia, Elysium, bliss, or the
Promised Land, depending on your flavor of spirituality
and the doctrine you’ve formulated all by your lonesome regarding the
afterlife.

Each
god gets a patch of real estate wherein they entertain their most loyal of
servants, and rather than hold true to the Biblical edict that there is but one
God and one heaven, we’re teaching people that it’s more like the United States
of Paradise than one singular place.

If
the devil is fighting this hard at trying to accomplish something for so long,
in this case minimizing the need for Jesus, our first and most important
questions must be, why?

The
devil is not your friend. He is not trying to expand your thinking, he is not
trying to make you a better individual, nor is he attempting to make you more
tolerant and all-embracing for your spiritual betterment. So why is he trying
so hard to do away with Jesus?

Because
he knows the truth of what Peter asserts, a truth much of the church seems to
have chosen to ignore, the very true reality that it is through Christ that we
come to believe in God.

Without
Jesus, there is no path to God. Without Jesus, there is no way, there is no
truth, and subsequently there is no life.

The
enemy has one purpose, and that is to keep as many of God’s creation out of the
place Jesus went to prepare for those who believe. He will do all that is in
his power to do, he will lie, cajole, misrepresent, obfuscate, omit, and pull
every underhanded trick you could possibly imagine and twice as many that you
likely couldn’t, to derail you from the path, and compromise you in some manner
or fashion.

To
believe that the enemy is giving advice to Christians out of the goodness of
his heart and because he is such a magnanimous fellow, is as funny and simultaneously
impossible as one political party giving sage advice to the other as to how
they could better win elections.

People
who shoot themselves in the foot are not long for this world, and the enemy’s
been around long enough to know better.

Sunday, October 26, 2014

We’ve
become averse to talking about difficult topics. We’ve grown averse to broaching
and delving into difficult things, taking a page out of the world’s book and
just glossing over them or pretending they do not exist. The more we pretend
the worse things get, the worse things get the more callous we become, until a ‘pastor’
giving aids to the parishioners he slept with is half a story at best, and the
fact that he refuses to step down from the pulpit is treated with uttermost
indifference.

It
is downright scary how quickly we’ve descended into the mire and how few in the
church voice any opposition to it. The sheep are told to know their place, the
leadership appropriates powers and indulgences they have no business
appropriating, and we hobble along as anything of virtue, anything noble,
anything good and wholesome gets dismantled piece by piece by the godless among
us.

‘But it’s okay,
it really is, we’re on track to meet the budget this year, and break ground on
the new building which will outshine the old one, and have a nice shiny cross
on its roof that can be seen from space.’

Perhaps
somewhere on a subconscious level, many have realized their messages lack
power, substance, Christ, repentance, holiness, the cross, and self-denial, and
as such have no power to transform anyone. It is because of this inescapable
reality that they need the projects, and the events, and the distractions just
to keep people placated and distracted from the reality that theirs is a hollow
spirituality.

We
wander aimlessly about, comforting each other with the tired adage of ‘well get them next time’, or ‘we may have lost the battle but not yet the
war.’ But why? Why are we losing battle after battle, why is the darkness
never impeded and the light always sacrificed? Why do we make concessions, and
give up ground, why do we keep making our arguments only halfheartedly, and why
is there always some apologist in the church who is ready to stand up for sin
and insist that we must understand it and learn to live with it?

It
is likely I’ve said this before because it’s true, but it bears repeating, it
is because much of what we call the church today is itself compromised that we
are so timid and fainthearted in our defense of truth.

Confronting
sin in the church is a difficult thing. Confronting sin in the leadership of
the church is an all the more difficult thing, and this is why much of the time
it is the world that exposes the dereliction of church leadership rather than
the church body exposing it.

What
does this have to do with anything? Well, it goes back to the genesis, to the
root cause of why the church is in the sad shape that it’s in, and among the
many reasons is the absence of the fear of the Lord.

When
we fear the opinion or even backlash of the world more than we fear God Himself,
when we try to accommodate the darkness rather than defend the light, then we
are become a detriment to the household of faith, and an unfaithful servant to
our Master.

Saturday, October 18, 2014

As
perfect storms go, the one currently brewing is a doozy. If this were a
military assault it would be like looking at simultaneous attacks from air,
land, and sea, with little to no ability to mount a defense, never mind an
offense.

It
seems like every day I see ten different things I can write about, but I’ve
come to realize it is all low hanging fruit. The nation has chosen sin over
God, rebellion over obedience, and now, everyone’s part of the evening, the
bill is coming due and we’re all thinking we got overcharged.

We
didn’t. God keeps good records, and though we might have forgotten about it, or
dismissed it as innocuous, everything we have done as a nation in diametrical
opposition to His will and ways, every decision we that broke His heart, every
sin we embraced and virtue we rejected, is itemized and accounted for.

This
weekend I travel with my brother and a friend to pray for someone who is
suffering untold pain. Please keep us in your prayers, and pray the Lord will
do as He wills in regards to this situation. We know we serve a God who is
able, a God who can heal and who can restore, and we have the faith that He
will work in a mighty way.

When
I return we will delve back into Peter’s first epistle to see what more the
Lord would teach us.

I’m
guessing you get enough Ebola talk from everyone else, so me piling on won’t help
matters any. We fear not, for we know the One we serve. We fear not, for we
have been buried with Christ, and with Him raised to a new life.

Will
it get worse? Most definitely. The Book says men’s hearts will fail them for
fear of those things coming, and looking at the current landscape of this
broken world, one can already see a handful of things that would cause one to
have palpitations, if not outright stop their heart.

Thursday, October 9, 2014

How
many warnings must fall on deaf ears before even God Himself is accused of
crying wolf? How many unheeded messages and messengers, how many unheeded
dreams, how many unheeded prophecies, how many unheeded calls to prepare and
sanctify ourselves before even we must admit that God has been more than
gracious, and merciful and patient with us?

How
long before we, ourselves, begin to cry out for judgment rather than mercy?

Although
‘what’s the Lord saying’ is by far
the most popular question I get in my correspondence, whenever things begin to
heat up and we begin to see more pieces falling into place, a quiet hum becomes
a roar, and I have to wade through e-mail after e-mail asking the same question
over and over.

I
understand the need or desire to want to know what the Lord is saying, but the
Lord has been saying many things, for many years, all of which have gone wholly
unheeded.

‘Humble
yourselves, repent, turn from your wickedness, and pray!’

‘Yeah,
we don’t want to do that, so, what else is the Lord saying?’

‘Prepare yourselves,
sanctify yourselves, and steel yourselves for what is to come.’

‘I
think we’ll pass on that one too…just tell us what’s going to happen and be
specific.’

God
has spoken, and He is still speaking, but He is not saying the things the church
wants to hear, so the church has chosen to ignore Him altogether.

Even
when He is specific, even when God in His love and mercy outlines everything
that will unfold, if it doesn’t happen within a hair’s breadth of being
uttered, well, then it must have been a false prophecy. We want the quick
turnaround. Utter today, fulfill tomorrow, ask no more of us than what we’re
already doing for the Kingdom, and we can all go about our business. Never mind
the fact that God warns far enough in advance to give people time to repent. Never
mind the fact that most true revelation is uttered far enough in advance as to
be deemed improbable if not outright impossible at the time it is put forth. We
took the initiative and changed the rules on God, and He’d better adhere to our
new parameters, otherwise we’ll throw a hissy fit like the spoiled children we
are.

So
what is the Lord saying? There is one resounding message that the Lord is
speaking today. It is clear, perhaps clearer than any other message I’ve
received in recent years, and that message is fulfillment.

One
word, but it encompasses everything we need to know concerning the season into
which have entered. Fulfillment! Of what, you might ask? Of everything God has
said is coming, of everything the Word of God forewarned us will take place in
the latter days, and all the optimism and platitudes and wishful thinking and
positive attitude in the world will not spare the unprepared from the horrors
that are on the horizon.

Even
those speaking messages of warning got caught up in thinking they had more
time, that the things they had been shown were something afar off, perhaps ordained
to take place after they would have passed from this life to the next, but we
are seeing it is not so. The time is not afar off, the time is now, and if we are
not in Christ, if He is not our anchor, our rock, our foundation, our refuge,
our hope, our peace, our strength, our provision, and our joy, we have no one
to blame but ourselves.

Saturday, October 4, 2014

We
make heroes of monsters, and monsters of good men. We idolize the perverted and
depraved, while mocking innocence and making light of hard work. We are
barreling headfirst toward destruction laughing raucously all the way, not
realizing we are the joke. We are the punchline the world is laughing at, and
we no longer even entertain the idea that they’re just laughing with us. We now
know they are laughing at us.

Everyone
squeaks and squawks about equality, but equality isn’t really what anybody’s
after. The desired result, what is being sought and pursued with vigor, is for
the majority to be culled, made to heel, and to be ruled by a minority. This is
the only equality that they will accept, and most people are indolent enough,
concerned only with instant gratification rather than the long term effects of
what is being done, to be bothered.

Give
them bread, and give them circus, and the vast majority will care not a whit
about what is being done behind the scenes, or the perilous edge their nation
is balancing upon.

We
treat more harshly one who forgets to feed their pet breakfast, than one who
willfully murders an unborn baby. We laugh at sin, and refuse to acknowledge
the consequences of it, finally finding someone else to blame for the shambles
our life has become once the cancer of depravity has run its course and all
that remains is an empty shell with broken dreams and a dark and haunted
future.

The
church, the one place that ought to be safe haven for the broken, bruised, and hungry
has become home to thieves and hucksters, two bit con artists and confidence
men who come up with wilder and wilder stories, promising bigger and bigger
returns on one’s investment, hoping to snare another gullible innocent in their
web.

Indulgences
are readily available for the right price, and if you’ve got enough cash, you
will surely find someone to talk you right through the pearly gates, into
Abraham’s bosom, using the VIP entrance.

Maintaining
one’s integrity in a climate such as this is becoming more and more of a struggle,
especially when you know you can come up with better shtick on your worst day,
than most of the oily peacocks prancing about on stage.

From
time to time you find yourself growing envious of the naïve and ignorant as
well. You know the ones, those waiting at the bus stop for one way charter to
heaven, because at least for now, it seems their ignorance affords them a
blanket of bliss that knowledge stripped from you long ago.

I
find myself becoming more cynical and I don’t like it. I find myself looking for
the angle, even with those who identify themselves as Christians, and the sad
reality is that most often the angle they’re playing at isn’t very well
concealed.

Worst
by far, at least as far as I’m concerned, is that by and large the enemy has
deceived much of the church into believing the lie that though they serve a
supernatural God, He no longer does supernatural works. We are a world upended,
and sadly a church upended, and because we no longer believe in the manifest
power of an engaged God, we mistake darkness for light far too often, and
reject truth as though it were a lie with startling regularity.